Random thoughts, everyday observations, for those who know me - a little bit of those random facts and figures I seem to collect. This does not represent the opinions of my consulting clients.

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Feature wish list for my Kindle 2

I've been using my Kindle 2 for three weeks and it's GREAT. My impetus for purchasing it was after I read In Defense of Food on my iPhone Kindle app on a cross country flight. Many asked was the screen too small? Nope, held it right near my face and quickly digested the book. Not having another thing to carry around was great, one downside was my iPhone battery was drained. The iPhone Kindle book was a test and it passed.

Keyboard - It's hard to type fast and accurate. I guess it's not a key feature, but I thought it could be implemented in a better fashion. Maybe license the Blackberry keyboard design.

WSJ Subscription Interface - It's only one paper, but I found the navigation to be clunky. It slowed me down. Maybe Amazon needs to set some guidelines on usability.

Dictionary - you can move your cursor next to any word and find out the definition, but what happens when it's two words? Feature is great, but would be better if you could highlight a couple words and search for a definition.

Email to a friend - This would be great for newspapers, blogs, and magazines. Email to a friend is a feature I use often on my Blackberry WSJ application.

Social Sharing - I'd like to be able to post to my Facebook account or Twitter. Make it easy to do this.

Social "Kliff notes" - You can bookmark and write notes on sections of text in a Kindle book. It would be great if people could share these notes. For example, it would be interesting to get an author's commentary throughout the book. Similar to the director's comments on a DVD movie. Imagine the same with college textbooks, you could buy your text and then get the "Kliff" notes from someone who took the class earlier.

Title Proximity Promotion - Recent articles have mentioned how line of sight PR of books will be impacted by the Kindle 2. You're on the subway and you see someone reading a book, you usually can figure out what they're reading. With a Kindle you can't. Would it be possible to have a regional most popular list based on where you use your Kindle?

Kindle Only Book Features - Some paper based books have summaries at the end of a chapter (leadership, nutrition, etc), if you want you can easily flip through all of them. I just finished reading Evolution Rx and at the end of every chapter there is a short summary of the chapter. The author or the Kindle needs to figure out a better way to access critical features of the book. Just moving the book onto the Kindle might affect the reader's utility without making critical adjustments to the table of contents, appendices, and/or content.

Thinking out into the future as more Kindles are sold, could potential new books be seeded into the Kindle population? Free books if you read them and rate them?

A test market with some statistical analysis lead to book companies knowing how many paper copies to print?

Could Kindle copies be the first release, followed by hardcover, then paperback?